+3 weeks

Big girl - already 10 lbs!

August 11, 2008: Welcome!

Here's the latest addition to the clan...isn't she cute?

Travels with freak-bags.

I don't think I've ever encountered so many nut jobs in such a short period of time. In 30 hours, the following:

1. Crazy rushed cab driver. I ordered a cab for 4AM. The guy calls up to my apartment at 3:55, and says, can you come down now, I'm on a tight schedule? What? Who does that? Excuse me, it's 3:55 in the morning, hold your horses for 5 minutes.

2. Yellow submarine kid. Sitting in the airport waiting for my connection, I'm sitting back-to-back with 2 sisters, probably 6 years old. The one is singing the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" (but only the line "We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine" - not any of the verses. So I was thinking - wow - that's great, a kid so young knowing the Beatles so well - well done parents! Then the other one starts singing it, and the first girl says "No, you can't sing it, you don't know all the words." What? How tough is "we all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine"?

3. Bag to big for the overhead bin lady. This woman brought a bag on the plane that couldn't fit up top, but she didn't want to part with it, so she began dumping all her belongings out all over the seat and in the aisle (mind you, the plane was already full and seated, we were only waiting for her to sit down). So she's flinging goods about, and out pops a book that looked like a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary - at least 4 inches thick. No wonder her bag wouldn't fit. So everyone's standing around watching, as she's trying to shuffle her spilled belongings under the seat in front of her, kicking things around under she can trap it all under there.

4. No Boarding Pass man and his moronic wife. Enter the final passenger, with a seat that, shockingly, is filled by another man. Her ticket has that seat assigned to her (yes, we were ready to take off, and then this happened), so she called the flight attendant. The attendant asked the man for his boarding pass, and he said he did not have one, and that he didn't ever have one. Alarm bells, of course, how the heck could this guy get onto the plane with no boarding pass, much less through security? So the man has to forfeit his driver's license right away, and they make a radio call to security and another call up to the gate, where someone important comes down into the plane to talk with the man. Finally, when they were asking if and how he snuck onto the plane, his wife was like "Oh, is this what you are looking for? I just didn't let him hold it." What? Thanks for the 30 minute delay, jackass.

5. Almost took a header down the stairs girl. That was almost me in the Bismarck Airport. They have these sticky things on the stairs so your shoes don't slip in the rain. But, what happens when it's dry and the things are sticky? Yes, they catch your shoes. Enter me, trying to catch my balance, effectively dancing down the stairs trying not to make my face a part of the floor. Thank goodness I had my backpack on, it kept my center of gravity back a bit, so i didn't tip forward. That would not have been a fun start to the day.

6. Mr. Camo Capri Pants. If I didn't see them with my own eyes, I would have never believed they existed. At the hotel check in, there was a man with camo capris on. He shouldn't have been let out of the house looking like that.

7. Mr. Tear Me a New A-Hole. During this meeting, a guy showed up in a really bad mood, and since he didn't like this other group of guys, he decided to rail on me after I asked a simple question. To put it in relatable terms (i.e. not in work-speak), it was the equivalent of me asking "what is your favorite color," and his response is to go on a 15 minute rant on how his car actually is nice and that no one understands him and they keep telling him his car is ugly. How is the question related to the answer? Yes, that's right, not at all. And then he had the audacity at the end to say "I'm not picking on you." Hmm. Instead of picking on me, you tore me a new a-hole. Gee, that's much better, thanks. So the guy he doesn't like, got up and started yelling at him for being a jackass...hoo-rah. And when it all came back to me, I was like "Hey, I've never seen your car, and I don't care how pretty it is, all I wanted to know was what color you liked." HAHA.

Bismarck Airport: These next few deserve a section all to themselves, they are way far above and beyond anyone I've come across. And all of this happened within the last 90 minutes. A record.

8. Insane Freak-Bag Vacuum Man. I'm at the airport early, and I go and sit in front of a TV to eat a sandwich. No problem, then the man vacuuming the terminal decides to come over & vacuum the space I'm in. But instead of doing that, he uses it as an opportunity to tell me about how important it is to vote, because his minimum wage is too small, and social security is crap. And that I should tell the youth of America to vote. Or to not vote, if no one has a good solution to minimum wage or social security. Because if we all don't vote, then they can't elect anyone, and we won't vote until someone good comes along. What?? Then, he goes into the "one world" global conspiracy theory, on how we're all going to lose our individuality because the United Nations is going to rule the world, and the Federal Reserve charges 5% interest for a job they don't even do. And therefore, we will be arrested if we speak our minds. What?? (I am not kidding or exaggerating...) At this point, he's left and come back over 2 or 3 times, each time giving me more revelations. As much as I try to ignore, he won't shut up or go away. I was actually considering going over to security to get him away. Instead, I went clear to the other end of the terminal, put on a jacket and sat in a corner, my head buried in my laptop. Re-enter Insane Freak-Bag Vacuum Man. He found me, comes up and says "I'd like to add 1 more thing if I can," and without me answering proceeds to tell me about how there is one true God, and that pagans and other various world religions are wrong and will eventually come under 1 world religion, because everyone knows that's the one true right thing to believe. And then, he says, that as it was stated in Revelations, 2 angels will come down and kill everyone who doesn't believe in the "one true" God, or who believes in evolution, and leave their bodies in the streets for 3 and a half days. After all, we didn't crawl out of the ocean. What????? How does one tell the crazy man to go away without being beat over the head with a vacuum for believing in evolution?

9. Purple-Hatted Chair Lapper. This man in a purple trucker hat keeps walking around and around a set of chairs. (It's been at least 30 minutes, and I keep catching him out of the corner of my eye.) It's driving me crazy.

10. Mr. Cell Phone Farter. No joke - this guy is very loudly talking on a cell phone about 30 feet from me, when he rips a cheek-flapper so loud I almost didn't think it was real. But, the ground shook, so I knew. And all he does is laugh on the phone to whoever he's talking to. THEN once he hangs up - he rips one even louder! It sounded like the clapping of an audience of hands. Yuck.

That's all for now, but give it time...I haven't even left Bismarck yet.